As equipment for coping with a recording medium, having audio data recorded thereon, a CD player, or recording and/or reproducing apparatus, employing a magneto-optical disc, having a diameter of 64 mm, that is MD (Mini-Disc) (trademark), as a recording medium, is now in use.
On the part of the user, the operation of dubbing a music air recorded in e.g., a CD, on a MD, is sometimes carried out by way of dubbing audio data, as an example.
It has recently been proposed to record e.g., music airs, recorded on a portable recording medium, such as CD or MD, on a hard disc drive (HDD), by way of dubbing, and to use the HDD for example as a music providing server.
In the CD or MD, one or more programs (tracks) are recorded, with a sole music number, for example, as a program or a track, with the entire programs or tracks making up a sole album. In the operation of dubbing the CD or the MD, as a recording source, to another recording medium, the dubbing operation may be performed on the CD in its entirety, that is on the album basis, or on only the track(s) as specified by the user.
It should be noted that, in certain conventional audio equipment, not only the music data but also the supplementary information for the entire album or the individual music number(s) can be recorded. The supplementary information here refers to text data, such as album name or the name of the music air(s), recording date and time, or copyright information (SRC: International Standard Recording Code). In the case of a Mini_Disc (MD) system, for example, the names of the music air, album name or the recording date and time can be recorded in association with each recorded music number or the entire album. However, in inputting the text data, such as the names of the music airs, the user has to enter the text using an operating system of an MD recording device by an extremely laborious operation. In many cases, a large number of users merely enjoy the music, without inputting the names of the music airs or album names.
Although the recording equipment may be connected to a PC (personal computer) to make use of the PC keyboard as an aid in inputting the text, this cannot be said to relieve the user of the load in inputting the music air name or album name.
Moreover, if the user is to input text data, such as the name of the music air, he or she must grasp, as a matter of course, from which track number of the CD a music air now recorded has been recorded by dubbing. For example, if the user selectively recorded plural music airs from a large number of CDs, there may be occasions where the names of the music air, recorded on the MD, become unclear, that is the user is unable to input the names of the music numbers, unless the user is well aware of the music airs.
It may also occur frequently that, in the case of an apparatus adapted for dubbing a large number of CDs to an HDD, the relationship of correspondence between the music airs recorded by dubbing on the HDD and the CDs as the recording source becomes unclear for the user.
As outside servers, such as music air information sites, such as the Internet, there are many services of presenting the names of the music airs recorded on a CD and the supplementary information. If it has become unclear from which CD the CD album recorded by dubbing to e.g., a HDD is originated, it becomes impossible to enjoy the services presented by the outside servers.
That is, although correlated recording of the supplementary information in association with data, such as music data, recorded on the recording medium, has recently been achieved in a variety of recording systems, there are many cases where the information which relies to some extent on the user input, such as text information, is actually not recorded in these systems, such that, in many cases, the text information cannot be utilized effectively.